Tron: Legacy (2010)

Tron: Legacy (2010)

by Santiago Pliego

"Greetings, Programs!"

When Aristotle said that “spectacle” was the least artistic element of a visual story, he probably was right—within the Greek context of the time. However, as time progressed, one part of theater evolved into film, and at the same time, technology kept raising the bar every year, allowing filmmakers to create more real and immersive worlds, allowing the artistry of spectacle to increase. Tron: Legacy brings us such a world.

Tron: Legacy, directed by Joseph Kosinski, is the story about one man’s search for a “digital frontier” and his son, who must rescue him when he gets stuck in the digital world. The father, Kevin Flynn, is a famous video game designer who is raising his son, Sam Flynn, and awaits the day when he will be able to show his son The Grid (the digital world). When Sam was seven years old, Kevin went to his office one night and never came back. This threw Flynn’s video game company, ENCOM, into chaos and even though Sam was the largest stockholder, he never accepted the responsibility of running the company and passed the responsibility to the company’s board. Twenty years later, Alan Bradley, one of the board’s members and a close friend of Kevin Fynn, receives a page from the old Flynn Arcade, and Sam goes to investigate, since the arcade’s number has been disconnected for twenty years. He discovers his father’s secret laboratory and after tinkering with a computer console, gets sent to The Grid, where he finds out that the “programs” have rejected the dominion of the “users”, and are lead by a program named CLU, who was a program created by Kevin at the beginning of The Grid and was assigned the task of creating the perfect system.

The plot in and of itself is not very original but neither is it terribly stale. However, similar to James Cameron’s Avatar, the force of the film arises from the film’s aesthetic elements. This movie is spectacular, not in the modern sense of awesome, but in the Aristotelian sense of relating to what the audience perceives through their eyes. The film’s setting is perfectly crafted through the use of bright and crisp visual effects, delivering an immersive world that is breathtaking and sinister at the same time. Contrary to many films that are too focused on visual effects that do not fit in the story, Tron: Legacy’s use of VFX enhances the experience and the realism of the story by creating a world that is plausible within the film’s universe. The aerodynamic design of The Grid, the vehicles, and the clothing also reflect the recurring theme of perfection throughout the narrative. To further increase the technical strength of the film, an awesome soundtrack and sound editing accompany the tech-inspired visuals. The low-key orchestral score is paired with sharp electronic themes performed by the French DJ-duo Daft Punk, creating a unique epic-electronic soundtrack that is emotionally charged and aggressive at the same time. Complemented by the sound editing, the film produces a vibrant, palpable atmosphere is almost real. The acting is also good, although the dialogue tends to be slightly clichéd at certain points in the film. Ultimately, the aesthetic qualities of Tron: Legacy are more than satisfactory and still leave you wanting more.

Fortunately, the film is a technical masterpiece, because the story is extremely weak due to the worldviews presented in the film. The plot idea is good, but it’s transformation into a compelling narrative ultimately fails mostly because of the messy worldview combinations that it presents. During the film, several references are made to Christianity and Zen-Buddhism, with some undertones of Eastern Pantheistic Monism scattered throughout. Kevin Flynn and Sam Flynn are a weak representation of God and Jesus, respectively. Kevin Flynn is “the creator” and a “false deity”, while Sam Flynn is referred to as “the son of our maker.” When Kevin Flynn first entered The Grid, he made CLU “in his own image”, although this happens with more of a Buddhism undertone since CLU ends up being the complete opposite of Flynn—an allusion to the balance of good and evil in the Zen-Buddhist philosophy. Originally, Kevin Flynn wanted to create the perfect system and CLU, since he was made in Flynn’s own image, strove towards perfection as well. When CLU overthrows Flynn, Flynn retreats to a secret place off-Grid and “removes himself from the equation”, hoping that CLU will be brought down by his own angry followers. This is inconsistent with the Christian worldview, since passivity against evil is not encouraged in the Bible. The attempt to fusion Zen-Buddhism and Christianity falls short, and actually ends up deconstructing each worldview and twisting them around to try to find false points of synchronization. At one point in the film, Isomorphic Algorithms (ISOs, for short) manifest themselves out of nowhere and Flynn sees them as perfection embodied. He tells Sam that he wanted to use their perfect DNA to cure diseases in the real world, to answer questions about philosophy, to basically change the way humans understood the world. CLU, however, saw them as an imperfection, and destroyed them. If Flynn’s was so obsessed with a perfect creation, how could he have been so naïve to create a program in his own image that was nothing but the complete opposite of his own image? The answer to this inconsistency is attempted in the final confrontation, which actually ends up solidifying the inconsistency even more. CLU angrily states that he has done everything that Flynn “programmed” him to do. “You promised that we would change the world, together! You broke your promise.” At this point, the best way for Flynn to answer would have been “You deformed my promise!” but instead, Flynn says, “I know. I understand that now.” CLU states that he “created the perfect system”, to which Flynn replies: “The thing about perfection is that it's unknowable. It's impossible, but it's also right in front of us all the time. You wouldn't know that because I didn't when I created you. I'm sorry, Clu. I'm sorry.” The problem with this, in terms of philosophy and in the narrative, is that the adversary in the film has been doing what he is supposed to, and what he is supposed to do is what Flynn, the hero, told him to do. Considering this, the blame for The Grid’s current state is actually Flynn’s, because he was naïve enough to have created a program with his own imperfect understanding of the world.  Also, Flynn states that “perfection is…unknowable. It’s impossible, but it’s also right in front of us all the time.” In other words, what Flynn has been striving for this whole time, with his Zen rituals and even with the desire to perfect the world with the ISOs, is not possible, but at the same it’s also there, happening. Apart from being a complete contradiction of the character’s motives, it’s also a void statement that gives that idea that the writers of the film wanted one of their characters to say something “profound”, without having understood either of the worldviews themselves. Flynn says that CLU saw the ISOs as imperfections, and condemns him for destroying them. In the end, however, when Flynn says that “perfection is unknowable”, the case could be made that the ISOs might have been, in fact, imperfections, because no one can know what perfection really means. The contradiction of worldviews added to the contradiction of arguments made within a specific worldview makes all the actions of the characters, be they good or bad, fall apart. Thus, the story becomes nothing more than a bunch of deceived figures moving randomly around a grid that looks very, very cool.

Tron: Legacy is a film that promised much but delivered an incomplete package. The film’s audiovisual elements are superb, but the story breaks apart not because of too much focus on VFX, but because the filmmakers did not understand the worldviews they were dealing with. Sticking to one worldview—even a wrong one—can produce a good film. This film, though, attempted to fusion two worldviews that have nothing in common without even understanding or explaining each of them correctly. Instead of effectively juxtaposing aesthetic and philosophical elements, this movie only provides the audience with half of the requirements. Unfortunately, extraordinary visuals and auditory elements paired up with unsound logic do not make up a good story, but they do provide good action scenes and a stunning experience that few films can surpass.